This is a bit like the proverbial question ‘How long is a piece of string?’.
When you visit me, you may have experienced health problems for years, or even for decades. Many factors contribute to your state of health: diet and lifestyle of course; stresses and strains of family and working life; the kind of health you inherit from your parents.
Sometimes you may have several ailments going on together, and sometimes you may be taking several conventional medicines. It is hard to say at the outset, how long improvement may take.
After I have talked to you, I can give you some guidance. Later on in treatment, it may be easier to assess. There are also some conditions that cannot improve, for example, if you have had an organ removed! However, your general health and state of happiness can still improve!
People often also ask ‘what is your success rate for X, Y or Z?’ This is such an important question, one that most people ask.
First of all, homeopathy does not treat an illness in isolation. Homeopathy treats the whole person, who has the illness. Your illness is part of you as a person, and not separate. This means that six people with arthritis will have six different health histories, and will probably receive six different homeopathic remedies! Each one must mirror the individual as well as the illness.
Secondly, although I keep records, it helps to remember that we do not live in a scientific experiment! Most of my clients are intelligent, helpful and want to do the right thing. However, one or two may not take the medicine correctly, or they may not take it at all. They may not be able to continue treatment for some reason. They may be too impatient, and decide to abandon treatment, or they may wish to try a different kind of therapy.
Some of my clients are not able to give me all the information I need to make a good prescription. They may not know, they may not remember, or it may just be too personal - at least for the first consultation.
All of these things mean that my statistics are difficult to assess.
Lastly, how we measure ‘success’ is a big question. It is easy to see relief from pain, improved mobility, or a lower incidence of migraine attack. It is harder to measure mood, happiness and energy.
It is also hard to measure the subtle ways that improvement can begin. Health changes may start in a part of the body different from the main ailment, and still be significant. For example, you may consult me about recurrent tonsillitis, and after your remedy, you may begin to sleep better before any change occurs in the throat.
Maybe I have. In 20 years of practice, I have seen a lot of things! If I have not treated a problem like yours, maybe one of my colleagues has, and I can find out. However, it is most important to know that in homeopathy, it does not matter what kind of problem you have.
You may have a common difficulty like depression or frequent colds; you may have a rare condition like Wilson’s disease or Munchausen syndrome. You may have no name or diagnosis for your condition. Everyone is treated by the same procedure. I will listen to the details of your condition. I will find out as much as possible about your general health. I will check out diet, sleep, lifestyle and so on, as outlined in Homeopathic Consultations. And I will prescribe a homeopathic remedy that matches your description as closely as possible.
Ten people with the same named disease may each receive different remedies! So if your condition is something I have not seen, do not worry. I am treating you, the person, and not just your condition.
First of all, it is not legal for any therapist or doctor in the UK to make any claim to be able to treat cancer. If you see any claims like this, they are unlikely to be true, and they are illegal.
Second, true homeopathy does not treat any individual illness alone. We always treat the whole person. The whole person may have one illness or many: cancer; a common cold; allergies; a cut on the knee; Alzheimer's disease; chickenpox. The procedure is the same in all cases. A good homeopath will take your details (your 'case'), select the remedy best matched to your situation, and (with your agreement) treat you.
This treatment is best undertaken face to face, with plenty of time for all the necessary information to be exchanged.
Results will also be assessed in terms of your whole condition, and not only in terms of one disease.
2007 Note: There is a campaign going on in some quarters to discredit homeopathy, and one way to do this is to entrap homeopaths into saying they can 'treat cancer'. Always remember, homeopathy is 'medicine for the whole person'.
Some natural remedies have interesting research results for reducing the risk of cancer, or alleviating the side effects of conventional cancer treatment, see Reducing the Risk of Cancer. This is by no means the same thing as treating cancer as a separate disease.
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This is a bit like the proverbial question ‘How long is a piece of string?’. 
Lastly, how we measure ‘success’ is a big question. It is easy to see relief from pain, improved mobility, or a lower incidence of migraine attack. It is harder to measure mood, happiness and energy. .jpg)
You may have a common difficulty like depression or frequent colds; you may have a rare condition like Wilson’s disease or Munchausen syndrome. You may have no name or diagnosis for your condition. Everyone is treated by the same procedure. I will listen to the details of your condition. I will find out as much as possible about your general health. I will check out diet, sleep, lifestyle and so on, as outlined in .gif){kind=small}
Creative Commons license, some rights reserved. You may use or share this text for certain non-commercial purposes, subject to conditions. Read more